Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: Ch. IX-XVIII (Dystopian Double Bill) (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-15 20:53:21
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
haven't archived this post yet. have a subscription? use the importer!

Downloads

  • hlbc huxley iii.mp3

Missing 1 full-res photo, 1 file, as this post has not yet been imported.

Content

'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin. I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'

Today we have seen the World State through the eyes of John the Savage, who has thrown the brave new world's soma out of the window in the name of Liberty.

We're discussing civilisation and its discontents, deep feelings as Shakespeare's thoughts, corrupted utilitarianism, human imagination vs invention, sacrificing high art for stability, and much more.

Please do feel free to enjoy the discussion even if you haven't read these parts of Brave New World yet. Huxley's work is a novel of ideas and the climax gives us his powerful closing argument. As such, you can enjoy our talk before, during, or after your reading in the way that best suits you.

Timestamps:

0:00 returning to Huxley’s dystopia 

2:00 Bernard finds Lenina alluring

4:00 clothing in the brave new world

6:00 Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida

8:00 John quotes from Romeo & Juliet

10:00 Civilisation and Its Discontents

12:00 sublimation & the Age of Freud

14:00 the utility of suppressing great art

15:00 our feelings were the bard’s thoughts

17:00 difference between Cressida & Juliet

19:00 John’s feelings of shame & guilt

20:00 Tolstoy on mankind as beehive

22:00 heinous unorthodox behaviour

24:00 ten guilty men vs one innocent

25:00 what does utilitarianism mean?

26:00 the state & worth of individuals

27:00 thinking about the trolley problem

29:00 do the ends justify the means?

31:00 self-preservation vs self-sacrifice

33:00 Linda & John in the World State

35:00 pride, non-serviam & self-worship 

36:00 ‘eternity was in our lips and eyes’

38:00 the hypocrisy of Bernard Marx

40:00 how the monster maketh the man

41:00 John’s disillusionment with society

42:00 human imagination vs invention

44:00 brainwashing posing as education

45:00 is Shakespeare just a distraction?

46:00 scent-organ experience at the feelies

48:00 satirising the development of cinema

50:00 the age of talkies & technicolour

51:00 John takes comfort from Othello

53:00 how idealism turns to misanthropy 

55:00 choosing between bliss & truth

56:00 dying in love in order to rise again

58:00 Helmholtz laughing at Shakespeare

1:00:00 why I love Romeo & Juliet so much

1:02:00 John as Othello & Lenina as Desdemona

1:04:00 the traumatic death of John’s mother

1:05:00 reading to accept our mortality 

1:06:00 the top five regrets of the dying

1:08:00 courageously choosing to be happy

1:09:00 John the Savage sparks a riot

1:11:00 ‘I’ll teach you; I’ll make you free…’

1:13:00 John the Savage vs Mustapha Mond

1:14:00 sacrificing high art for stability

1:16:00 Hobbes’ philosophy in Leviathan

1:18:00 appreciating the US Constitution

1:20:00 ‘happiness is never grand…’

1:21:00 how it feels to conquer a fear

1:22:00 seeing Huxley’s dystopia today

1:24:00 toil, labour & the beauty of life

1:25:00 the utopian vision in The Tempest

1:26:00 truth & science as public menace

1:28:00 sacrificing religion for society

1:29:00 what’s in the Controller’s library?

1:31:00 removing the bedrock of culture

1:33:00 The Varieties of Religious Experience

1:34:00 the markers of musical experience

1:36:00 William James on religion’s pragmatism

1:37:00 ‘why don’t you give them these books?’

1:38:00 is King Lear irrelevant to our time?

1:40:00 Mond’s reading of Cardinal Newman

1:42:00 being independent of God until the end

1:44:00 God manifests in modernity as absence

1:46:00 grasping the true essence of reality

1:48:00 ‘they’ve been conditioned to believe’

1:50:00 is our current time worse than this?

1:51:00 reading to enjoy company in solitude

1:52:00 ‘Providence takes its cue from men’

1:53:00 ‘society has no need for heroism’

1:55:00 why do we watch great tragedies?

1:58:00 claiming the right to be unhappy

2:00:00 the devastating end of the novel 

2:03:00 what did you make of the book?

2:05:00 reading assignment for Orwell

Resources to Explore:

  • Aldous Huxley: If you enjoyed Huxley's dystopian novel, you may wish to earmark some of his other works for future reads. We recommended the 1962 work Island, and also his non-fiction writings previously, but, for more novels of ideas, these are well worth checking out: Crome Yellow (1921), Point Counter Point (1928), and Eyeless in Gaza (1936).

  • Non-Fiction: If you're interested in the works of political philosophy and psychology mentioned throughout the discussion, then any of these would be well worth picking up and perusing: Sigmund Freud's Civilisation and Its Discontents, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, John Milton's Aereopagitica, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty & Utilitarianism, William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the Writings of Cardinal Newman. We also spoke about palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware's work The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. If you're interested to taking the hypothetical trolley problem we discussed to absurd extremes, then check out this fun website. You can see what percentage of people would make the same decision as you every step of the way.

  • Film Appreciation: Treat yourself to a screening of the 1971 cult classic film THX 1138, directed by George Lucas, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Robert Duvall, which draws from dystopian works like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's a great one to watch as we transition from Huxley to Orwell's world. For another dystopian classic from the seventies, Logan's Run is always great to watch. If you enjoy the satirical and parody aspect of dystopian visions, then Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil would make for great viewing too, especially as we move into Orwell's work. Or, for an option from the cinema of the noughties, I've always enjoyed Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, based on the classic science fiction novel.

  • George Orwell: As we are now segueing into Nineteen Eighty-Four, you might find it rewarding to pick up some of his non-fiction writings. Everyman's Library has an excellent hardback edition of his Essays. You may find the following essays to be of particular interest: 'Politics and the English Language', 'Why I Write', 'The Prevention of Literature', 'Inside the Whale,' and 'Looking Back on the Spanish War.' Orwell writes in a really crisp and digestible fashion, which makes it easy to dip in and out of his essays as your interest and mood dictates. Also bear in mind that the appendix of Nineteen Eighty-Four, 'The Principles of Newspeak,' is an important part of the reading experience of the novel, which Orwell directs readers to turn to very early on in the work.

Reading Assignment:

We are now moving from Aldous Huxley's soft dystopian vision in Brave New World straight into George Orwell's dark totalitarian nightmare in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Reading these two iconic works back to back will offer us a profound compare-and-contrast experience.

Our next discussion will cover the first part of Nineteenth Eighty-Four up to and including part two, chapter four, which takes us through to page 167 in the Penguin Classics paperback edition.

Now we're going to meet Winston Smith in one of the twentieth century's most enduring and influential works of literature. So continue bringing yourself to our dystopian double bill, making notes on any themes or ideas that capture your attention and imagination.

Questions to Consider:

1) What did you make of the ending of Brave New World?

2) What is your vision of utopia? And how could it become a dystopia for others?

3) Would it be worth sacrificing high art for stability? Would it even be necessary?

4) How would you persuade another to read Brave New World? And are you keen to explore more of Huxley's works?

5) What are you expecting moving from Huxley's vision into Orwell's dystopia?

And please do share with us your impressions, favourite passages, and striking ideas from the end of Brave New World.

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

Comments

Walker Rowe

I just finished the novel. This is a re-read for me. But I read it so long ago I forgot all of it. I found the first 1/2 a bit less than exciting. It's only when the psychological plot leaves behind the breeding details of the Gammas and Deltas and Epsilon that things get interesting. And the best of that is Lenina and Bernard's arrival in New Mexico. There we meet John, the Savage. He is my favorite. Bernard, as we find out, turns out to be a coward. And Lenina is a Beta-minus who is too programmed by the system to reciprocate the love of John except by offering him sex right away. John is repulsed by that though later and in the end of the novel he regrets that and is haunted by here beauty and his desire for her. Anyway, I like so much that John reads Shakespeare and quotes it. That's is the only book he had beside some instruction manual. Anway, I live in Cyprus so was interested by the Cyprus Experiment. Believe me, after being here six years I can tell you that this island is populated with Deltas and Epsilons. Yes is would be necessary to move them all out for Aldous Huxley's experiment as they are nowhere near Alphas. The people here are proles. According to the PISA exams, the schools here are ranked behind Mexico and Peru and just ahead of Brazil. This country is European by happenstance. Russians and Israelis and Germans and such are pouring in plus a few Americans and a sizeable number of Lebanese. Good. They will modernize this place. The problem is the Cypriots have never held dominion over themselves. They've always been ruled by someone else, until 1960. The vassal state. Coffee has been their sonoma. So according to Mustapha this is civilization as there are no decisions to be made here, no one reads, no one is burdened by thought. All they have are the feelies. Anyway, in the novel, the Alphas took over and there was chaos and the Alphas asked the government to take over again. Well, there's not much order here with the Deltas and Epsilons. Othello knew that. This was his military output, a Mediterranean backwater.

Amanda Mauch

I finished this about 2 weeks ago now, just before this lecture dropped. After a great start to the first half of the novel, I immersed myself in the dystopian universe totally, reading BNW and now into 1984, and watching the Handmaid's Tale TV series. Unfortunately, I think's it's turned into a bad time to do this given the state of the world! I live in Canada, and looking at our news and the events happening to the South of us in the States has left me in an anxious state and I think has given me a less humourous outlook on this work. 1) I'm honestly not sure what I make of the ending. I wasn't expecting it to end in John's suicide, though I had been thinking the whole time that there didn't seem to be a place for him in either world. I suppose it was inevitable for him to come to the same conclusion, I feel so sad for him. 2) My version of Utopia I think is very simple. A place where people are free to pursue the life that they want, that makes them happy, provided they are not harming others. One major provision of this Utopia would be that the necessities of life, for instance, food, shelter, medical care, education, would all be provided to all citizens for no cost. They would be human rights. The logistics of this, however, that is way above my paygrade to parse out. 3) I don't think it is worth sacrificing high art for stability, though I really don't believe they are mutually exclusive. Why couldn't we have both? I feel that the key thing that creates stability is the happiness of the people. Happy people, who are supported in their pursuits, are not unstable. Art in various forms contributes to people's happiness, so why should it be curtailed in the pursuit of stability? Seems like a great way to create a problem from my perspective. 4) I'm not sure I would try to convince people to read this novel right now. Depending on where you live in the world, I feel like this book can be quite triggering, as it has been for me. I would recommend it to people as a literary work, with the caveat I've mentioned. If they still want to tackle it, then that is their choice. 5) I'm already familiar with Orwell's work, so I do know somewhat what to expect from it. I'm curious now, what parallels I can draw when comparing the two.

Katie

I read this in high school and loved it. This time, by the end I had a pit in my stomach. I can’t believe this book was written in 1932. Today, I deleted all my social media, and some various accounts and apps that I just decided I don’t need anymore. I set my phone icons to black and white, and I’m allowing myself to have a little consultation by having my wallpapers as engravings by both Doré and Dürer (mostly of Dante and Paradise Lost, but I also included St. Jerome in his study) All that to say, I think we can all be John, but we can all persevere as well. Maybe Helmholtz got a happier ending. I work with students, and I was telling my coworker that even in the half a decade from when I graduated to college to now, young people just seem so…alien. I preface this by saying I have some AWESOME students, but most of them do not want to do anything if it’s hard. They drop classes all the time, even knowing they have to still pay for them. Maybe it’s my location, or the demographic I work in, but I think that’s why this novel scared me so much. I see it everyday.

Dayna

Late to the party yet again. I had never read either of these books before but of course I knew quite a lot, or so I thought. I was not prepared for the humor of BNW. The book started off very slowly for me with the droll lab & medical descriptions & the scant character development. (Is this purposeful due to lack of life experiences. Heartache, disappointment, achievement, love?) Glad I stuck with it & found myself more engaged with the story. So much to think on with this work and I can’t help but wonder what Huey would write if he were alive today. No lack of material to satirize, that’s for sure. I’m sure he would have a field day with the addiction to devices & social media. Could be like Soma? It is so interesting to me that Huxley created this “utopia” of happiness but it had a caste system, intolerance & cruelty. Not my idea of utopia. Huxley sure was telling us much about this utopia, in that huge amounts of Soma were being consumed. I found it quite a twist with the change in personality of Bernard and the character focus shift to John. I found the building tragedy of John’s character quite sad and it stayed with me for days.

Lily
>>178360295

Katie, Your post made me happy in the sense that I recognized a kindred spirit. I applaud your actions to shed your social media and smart phone weight. you wrote “I think we can all be John, but we can persevere as well. Maybe Helmholtz got a happier ending.” I absolutely agree with you. Helmholtz seemed to win that world’s lottery for me at least. He was able to go live in his semi isolated nature of choice and it seems may have exposure to other people who were atypical AND still have many freedoms possibly even books. John seemed to attempt his own exit without assistance yet was persecuted and not permitted to even begin to carve out a life but he also gave up. I do not intend to give up. Funny…i also have my phone wallpaper as a painting from Gustave Dore.

Jason M. Meyers

Hello, HCLBC family! I've completed Brave New World - just this morning.

Jason M. Meyers
>>178645088

I'm drawn to two relationships in the novel. Most striking for me is the dialogue between John and Mustapha Mond. Their life interpretations couldn't be more on the extreme ends of the philosophical spectrum. If you were to parse particular ideas from both of their perspectives, one could glean resonant and relatable ideologies. Both exhibit contemplative thought processes. From John's emotive, passionate embodiment of art and the possibility of love; his spirituality and desire for learning and creativity, to Mond's rejection and ultimate dismissal of these concepts; his belief in religion as mind control and it's effect on self worth and ease of living - all display struggles humankind has interpreted since the dawn of time. It left me with the feeling that experience cannot be identified as a puzzle set contained within a cardboard box. It can't be spread out on the coffee table and put together systematically, with a goal to finish in a specific time frame. Life is not binary; it isn't a pre-ordained set of pieces that ultimately fit in perfect unison. It shouldn't be conceived as a series of steps to complete a predetermined vision and outcome. It can't be an ideal sum of a logical progression to reach the endgame. The pieces don't always fit. The second relationship for me is Bernard's with the world. His self-importance. The disingenuous comportment he displays in his professing that he embraces the chance to struggle; desires discomfort; wishes to go about life in a purer, independent fashion. Ultimately - when faced with adversity however - he abandons the ruse. Points the finger. He separates from conflict and falls in line with the protocols made for him and the population of this Brave New World. Of John and Bernard, which is the more "Savage?" And this is for Ben: the music bookending the lectures is quite similar to some of the soundtrack to - of all things - the movie Halloween III. If you know that movie, it explores dystopian themes much like this novel. An isolated society with manufactured machines in human form that serve the controlling entity whose goal it is to destroy the children of the world. In a way, isn't that what the Brave New World is doing?

Ryan Daut

On a side quest from this month’s main quest of Huxley/Orwell, I read both “We” and Thomas More’s Utopia. In my edition of Utopia, the foreword essays were written by China Tom Miéville, who astutely pointed out that the island of Utopia was at first an inhabited part of the mainland, but was conquered and terraformed into an island through forced labor. The hidden implication is that behind the scenes of a perfect world is untold atrocity, and a culture shift like that could not have happened organically, and every Utopia is really a dystopia. As you said, paraphrasing the words of Margaret Atwood, “how is dissent dealt with in a fixed society?” How can there be stability in a forever changing world that directly contradicts the big theme of Ovid’s Metamorphoses? So what is my ideal Utopia? It doesnt exist. Utopia truly is no place.

Gonzalo Broto

This was my first read of the novel, despite having thought about reading it many times before, and I'm glad I finally did it! I thought I had a more or less clear idea of what the novel was about from hearsay, but it turns out I was very mistaken, or, at least, I knew only the tip of the iceberg, so the experience has been very surprising, unexpected and rewarding. What I found most interesting, as many others have pointed out, is the character of John the Savage, and his dramatic and disappointing discovery of the "Other Place" he had heard so much about from his mother. In a way, his disillusionment was all the more poignant because it was inevitable, since his imagination or his expectations collided with reality (as it happens to all of us when we see movie versions of our favourite books). John was a very tragic character, and he really didn't stand any chance in a world which offered him nothing he needed or wanted.

Dinah
>>178227519

Hello Amanda 👋 From the states here. I just wanted to say that I completely understand where you are coming from about this subject being triggering to those living in this part of the world where we are ultimately the most unstable we have been in some decades! Both BNW and 1984 have some elements about them that seems a possible near future for us if things keep going as it is. And I agree with you that those who are being subjected to living these new realities, it may be a bit much to add on extracurricular reading of dystopian novels while the world feels like it's on fire 🔥 😅 But I did take on BNW but decided to skip a reread of 1984 as it was hard enough to digest it just last year. (Still too soon) I enjoyed BNW and my take aways from it is that as individuals we can store up and treasure the things in life that are truly valuable to us. Get rid of the things and thinking that hold us back from living a "pure" life and not get swept away by whatever world order that is in place today.

Abigail M

I am almost finished with BNW and really enjoying it to my surprise! I also love how when I challenge myself with this book club, I in turn build my vocabulary. Huxley often describes Lenina and some females as pneumatic. I had to look up the definition! And for a few pages I kept wondering why he chose that word until deeper discoveries helped me understand. Kind of like they are puffed up, yet hollow. Hope everyone is having a good week.

Jonathon Glover

I just finished up reading ‘The Vanishing World’ by Sayala Murata and it has many connections to Brave New World. Feels like the love child of BNW and Convenience Store Woman set in contemporary Japan. However, I am not sure if it is a dystopia. It definitely has all the signs of it, and mirrors many of the issues in BNW and 1984, but it doesn’t have the moral imperative, and what we’re meant to take from it is more ambiguous. Would love to know if anyone has read it and what they thought?

Rob Teal

Not sure if anyone monitors this old thread. I just read this and was amazed that was written so long ago as I see so many similarities to modern times. LOVED the lectures and this book.